Matthew Jarpe
and Jonathan Andrew Sheen

I never expected a call from Homicide. Those
guys don’t call for help very often, and they never call us.My first thought when I got off the phone
was that these guys were finally wising up.They finally realized they needed information technology, data mining,
maybe even pattern recognition neural nets.I thought this was the beginning of a new era of cooperation between the
fifth floor and the basement, between the “real detectives” and the code
sniffers from Data Crimes.Boy was I
wrong.

“Looking
for Detective Lowitz?” I said to the sergeant behind the duty desk.The man barely glanced up from his crossword
puzzle.He pointed at a desk three over
and two back and said nothing.The man
sitting at that desk was sour-faced, old, and wearing a rumpled grey suit.

Lowitz at
least looked up when I threaded my way over to his desk.“You the guy from Data Crimes?”

“Yeah,” I
said.“I’m Darwin Koestler.”I held out my hand and he wiped his on his
desk blotter before and after shaking it.

“Sit,” he said.Then, over his shoulder, “Chuck, Koestler
from Data Crimes.”Another man, sour-faced,
old, and wearing a rumpled green suit, came over to lean on Lowtiz’s desk.

“Chuck Genesie,” he said.“Long way up from the basement.”

“I’ve never been up here,” I told
him, looking around the room.It didn’t
look at all like I expected.For some
reason I expected Homicide to be grittier.I mean, these were the real detectives up here.They worked with death every day.But I saw plants in the windows, and a cappucchino
maker in a little kichenette.Someone
had put up a couple of those little Monet prints you get at the art museum,
framed even.“It’s nice.”

“Well, don’t get too
comfortable,” Lowitz said.“We’re
sending you back down to the basement when this is wrapped up.”It came out sounding rough, but a little
smile told me he was joking.

“What’s this about?Somebody kill a computer?” I joked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lowitz
growled.

“We’ve got a dead A.I.”Chuck plucked a file off the desk and handed
it to me.“We don’t know if this one’s
supposed to go to you or to us.Or
somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else would be my
vote,” Lowitz said.“D.A. tells us that
in this state an A.I. isn’t a person.But it might be one according to the feds, pending Supreme Court decision
expected sometime next whenever.Meantime, this one’s dead and we’re not sure if we’re supposed to be
investigating it or not.”

“What do you mean, it’s
dead?”I flipped open the file and
scanned the few bits of information in it.

“I mean, it ain’t living any more,”
Lowitz said slowly.“As in dead.”

“But an A.I. isn’t alive,” I
said, trying not to sound like a smart-ass, even though I am one.“It’s a program running on a processor.If you stop the program, you can just start
it back up again.”

“Well, this one isn’t starting
back up,” Chuck said.“They tell us
it’s dead.That’s all we know.”He turned to Lowitz.“If this is something that’s up for
philosophical debate, I’m thinking we should drop this one.Hell, we don’t even know what dead means
with an A.I.Let’s give him the file
and be done with it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lowitz
said.

I was only half listening while
reading the file.The first section
didn’t read like a police report at all.In fact, it didn’t read like anything I’d ever read.It took me a while to realize it was a
printout of the report the A.I. community had sent Homicide that morning. The
second part of the file was a form Homicide used.It was much more sparse than the narrative supplied by the
A.I.’s.They had typed in the serial
number for the victim’s name, and someone had pasted in a magazine picture of a
desktop computer for the victim’s photo.

I looked up at Lowitz.“So, do I report back to you guys on what I
dig up?”

Lowitz looked at Chuck, who
shrugged.“Okay,” Lowitz said.“But not too often.Once a day.Come up around lunch time.”

Come up? Why did no one above the
first floor know what a network was for?“Got it,” I said. I held up the file.“So, did you guys find anything to draw a chalk outline of?”

I knew that.I took the file and retreated past the duty
desk to the elevators.As soon as the
doors closed I hit myself on the forehead.It was back to the basement for me.

Data Crimes was in the
basement. Of course. We didn't mind so much, it was that much less work for the
air conditioners to keep the Cold Room cold, and, hey, we're geeks. We keep
better in the dark. Outside the Cold Room, where the servers hummed away
quietly at 65 HEPA-filtered degrees, Data Crimes was a warren of cubicles,
arranged in a kind of staggered grid.It looked enough like a maze that Joe Armitrage, in the center cubicle,
had covered his desk with holey orange Styrofoam so it looked like a giant hunk
of cartoon cheese. There were fluorescent light panels in the ceiling, but they
were almost never on. Instead, the space was illuminated by desk lamps and
floor lamps in most of the cubes, with good old-fashioned incandescent bulbs.

Except for Bob "The
Suit" Carstairs, whose cubicle looked like a floor display at Staples,
you'd have known by looking in any cubicle that we were a geek team. The PCs
were running without their cases, and the cubicles were chaotic and overdecorated:
fantasy sports posters for Glen, Fat Andy's small army of action figures, my
little shrine to the great detectives of literature.You know, Dick Tracy, The Shadow, Batman. About every other one
had a coffee maker, a little mini-fridge, or both. The effect was kind of like
translating a college dorm into a corporate Cube Farm.

If you listened to any of
the guys above the ground floor, there were no real cops in Data Crimes.True, we didn’t go through the same training
as the guys upstairs did.They were
also a bit lax in the background checks when they were recruiting for the
mayor’s new special project.But the
idea was to get geeks on the right side of the law.So far it worked much better than the opposite programs in other
cities, where they attempted to train regular cops how to chase down
hackers.And we are real cops.I have a union card to prove it.

I entered
through the sliding glass doors and was hit by a wall of excited voices.

“This
dude’s taking the bait!”

“Aaagh!Compile, damn you!”

“And I’m
telling you for the last time nobody is stronger than the Hulk!Not the Silver Surfer, not Juggernaut,
nobody!”

“Hey,
Darwin, what did Homicide want?They
finally going to start using that pattern recognition app we wrote for them?”This last was from Seth.He and I had written a simple little neural
net that learned the mannerisms of a witness under interrogation.Since the Homicide cops often brought in the
same people to question for crime after crime, our little app would soon learn
when they were telling the truth and when they were lying their asses off.The cops upstairs maintained they could do
the same thing, only better.

“Nope,
they dumped a case on me.”The whole
room fell silent in seconds.Then Fat
Andy pumped his fist in the air and hooted.

“What?”
he said, standing up and peering down over the walls of his cube.“What did I miss?”

“I’m not
telling you guys,” I said, strolling over to my cube.And I wouldn’t, either.They’d be all over it like orange rocks on The Thing.I wasn’t kidding myself.They’d hack it out of me sooner or later,
just by monitoring my network access.But I wanted to get my case started before they did.

“Aw, come
on, Darwin,” Seth started to follow me into my cube but I held up my hand and
made a sweeping motion over the threshold.The privacy screen activated and all I could see of the zoo outside was
a garbled matrix.The sound dropped to
a nice low hiss.I sat down and flipped
open the file.

The printout on the first few
pages was a mess.It was full of
hyperlinks and the paper wasn’t even smart.I tossed the dead trees in the garbage and pulled up the original document
on my window.

It was a strangely worded
narrative describing the way the crime was discovered.There were a few A.I.’s specifically
designed to interface with humans.None
of them had worked on this document.

The A.I. in question, the
decedent, I guess, was a financial analysis program working for FirstBank.It was worth millions of dollars, insured,
working perfectly right up until it stopped.

It had taken the case a long time
to get to Homicide.The A.I. known as
AE35-20901A1 went flatline a little after 1:08:14 in the morning, GMT, on the
second of July.When the A.I. did not
report for work, the machines that depended on it began to investigate.

Figuring out how to hack into the
port would be child’s play to any of the A.I.’s, but there were concerns. If a
being couldn’t have security and privacy in the confines of its own FoamCore,
where could it? Hearings were convened, and the A.I.’s carefully explored the
issues: the interest of the community in the welfare of the unresponsive A.I.,
the vested interest each of them had in its own privacy and autonomy.

The decision was eventually
arrived at to hack into the access port and discover why AE35-20901A1 was
unresponsive. The A.I. that broke into the Foam Core was shaken when it
reported back. The code that made up AE35-20901A1 was all still there, but
hideously corrupted, in some places orderly enough to appear to be cogent, but
in others almost random ones and zeroes. But the intruding A.I. had checked
thoroughly: Not so much as a single subroutine of AE35-20901A1 would ever run
again. The Foam Memory Core in which it had existed was corrupted by whatever
digital spasm had enveloped it.

The news electrified the A.I.
community. They did not even know how to describe the event. Another set of
hearings was held, with testimony by the finest forensic A.I.s, byA.I. ethicists and A.I. semanticists. They
described the state of the code, discussed the condition of the Foam Core. One
radical group called for trying to re-install AE35-20901A1 from a tape backup
into the Foam Core. They were quickly silenced: An A.I. might not really be a
true gestalt between its software and hardware, but there was no way to know
for sure, and the thought of trying to install and run an A.I. in that mangled
system was horrifying, like birthing a baby into a blender. And it was a dead
certainty that installing the backups in a new Foam Core would result in a new
being. Enough like AE35-20901A1 to be a sibling, perhaps, but not the same: The
data paths always formed chaotically in a new medium. Finally, after extended
deliberations, the decision was made, and AE35-20901A1 was declared “Dead.”

The deliberations that followed
that declaration were shorter. There were no natural causes that could explain
AE35-20901A1’s condition. A full report was compiled, and then a summary, and
it was communicated to the Police Department in the jurisdiction where the
physical processor was located.

By the time the police dispatch
system had routed the call to Homicide, it was nearly 1:09:38 AM on the Second
of July. The A.I.’s had chewed over the information for almost a minute and a
half.

The file was loaded with
extras.Design specs, a complete
transaction history, even an offer of help.I clicked it, but nothing happened right away.I let all of my detective training take over and began to look
for the person who had the last known contact with the deceased.

It wasn’t as easy as it
sounded.AE, as I began to think of
“him,” was a busy little fellow.He’d
racked up over a million individual transactions in the last year alone.They weren’t in any particular order, or at
least in no order a human could perceive.It took a lot of data mining to get to the truth.

And that truth?The last contact AE had was a call routed
through so many different servers and switchboards that it was obviously meant
not to be traced.It didn’t look like
part of AE’s job.A personal call?It lasted about half an hour, a very long
conversation for someone who processed bits in the terraflop range.Six seconds after the call was completed, AE
went flatline.

I was tempted to e-mail this
great discovery to detectives Lowitz and Genesie, despite their injuction
against frequent updates.This was a
significant breakthrough, and I’d only been working the case for two hours.

Then I had second thoughts.I still didn’t have any reason to think AE
had been killed by that phone call.Six
seconds was a long time for an A.I.Anything could have happened between the end of that phone call and the
end of AE.And thinking the source of
the code that killed AE was physically located at the last node in the chain
was simplistic.The last thing I needed
was to roll out a manhunt for some nonexistent assassin at an irrelevant
physical location and end up looking like an idiot.

I lifted my hand and gestured at
the privacy screen.The matrix resolved
itself into the familiar maze of cubes.I shouted over the top of the wall at Seth next door.“Hey, Seth, you know anything about A.I.?”

A superball arced over the wall
between our cubes and I caught it.“Maybe,”
Seth said.“You going to share your
case?”

I tossed the ball back over.“Maybe.Why do you suppose an A.I. would sit for half an hour on an open link?”

The ball flew back over.“Dunno.Voice or data alone or voice and data?”

I checked the content of the
file.“Looks like data.No format I can tell.Information density is pretty high, no
common tags or identifiers.Almost
looks random.”

“Meat rider,” Seth said.

I caught the ball.“Meat rider.What the hell is a meat rider?”

“Get a clue, Darwin.Meat riding is ultracomputing’s dirty little
secret.A.I. hooks into a data jack in
a human brain and it gets to experience the flood of human emotion.Heady stuff for a bunch of qbits in a Foam
Core.”

“What’s the meat get out of it?”

“Money.Lots of money.Where’s
the ball?”

“Uh, here you go.Keep it.I’ve got to do some data mining.”

“I thought you were going to
share.”Seth’s head appeared over the
top of the divider.“What’s this
case?Did an A.I. kill somebody?”

“Let me get some more work done,
then I’ll give you guys an update.”

“Somebody killed an A.I.” Seth
said, and slumped against the divider.“Wow.That’s a first.”

“I’d like to make sure it’s the
last,” I said.

“So why did Homicide bump this
down to you?”

“Are you kidding?Those guys upstairs don’t even know how to
turn their computers on.”

“Except for Vice,” Seth
said.“I don’t think you can even
commit a sex crime anymore without first going through a web site.So how does an A.I. get murdered, anyway?”

“Keep it down,” I hissed.“These jackals are going to tear this one
apart.Let me get some legwork done and
I promise I’ll pull you in.”

Seth reached over and put his
hand on top of a stack of mint condition Spirit comics in Mylar snugs.“You swear by the mask of Denny Colt?”

“Uh, sure.I’ll talk to you after I get this search
done, okay?”

Seth nodded and disappeared back
behind the divider.I decided to leave
the privacy screen down, so as not to arouse any more suspicion.I pulled up the recorded session of AE’s
last call and gave it a more thorough analysis.It was half an hour of high bandwidth data transfer, both
ways.I tried to pick apart what had
gone on during that half hour, but nothing I ran the data through could make
sense of it.There were some things that
looked like neural-digital interface patterns; I just didn’t have the software
to make sense of it.

I tried tracing the call, and
there I had more luck.I found the
ultimate source of the call, the place where the human had stood during that last
half hour of AE’s life, in a public data terminal in a suburb of Frankfurt,
Germany.There was still a chance that
someone had installed a temporary router in the public data terminal and the
actual call had originated somewhere else, but that seemed unlikely to me.It would require an accomplice.

I had been at it four hours and
was thinking of calling out for Chinese when she walked in.She stepped into data crimes like she owned
the place and was thinking about dumping it at the first hint of a buyer.She tossed her long blonde hair out of her
eyes, but let it fall back again when she saw what there was to see.My coworkers dropped what they were doing
and stared after her, mouths hanging open.I would have been embarrassed for them, but she didn’t take notice, and
truth be told, my jaw was on my desk as well.

Her legs were long enough to
reach all the way to the filthy orange carpet, but she walked like she was
trying to keep her feet several inches above the floor.She headed straight for my cube, not confused
at all by the maze.She stepped up to
my desk, glanced around with a sniff, and sat down.

That thing I had clicked on about
six hours before.That help.“Oh, that.I was expecting some sort of a pop-up window.I wasn’t … that is I never expected … a…”

“Representative,” she finished
for me.“I represent the A.I.
community.”

“Of
course,” I said.“And why, may I ask …”

She
yawned and lay down on the Navajo throw rug I used to cover the disgusting
carpet in my cube.She stretched
luxuriantly, spread her legs and began licking her crotch.“Why what?” she said.

“Why are
you a dog?”

She
stopped her self-ministrations and leveled a cool gaze at me.That look made me realize why they called
Afghan dogs sight hounds.I’d hate to
be a rabbit on the receiving end of that look.“Detective Koestler, you’re not speaking to the dog you see in front of
you.You’re speaking to an A.I. located
in Hong Kong called 6C21-75869S4. You don’t expect me to wheel my Foam Core in
here, do you?This dog is called an
avatar. It’s how we get about, when we
need to interface with the human world.”

“But, a
dog?”

“Detective
Koestler, my time is very valuable.I’m
here to help you with this case.May we
proceed?”

“I’m just
saying, a robot maybe?You’ve heard of
R2-D2?Twiki?Asimo?”

“If you
must know, the dog provides me with an important quality called
embodiment.It helps with navigation
and communication.Now can we move on?I’m sure you’re aware that the A.I.
community is quite anxious to solve this case.What progress have you made so far?”

I told
her about AE’s last phone call, the public terminal, the neural activity in the
file.“So far my theory is that AE was
riding the meat, and something went wrong in the process.Do you have any idea if something can go wrong
during meat riding?”

You may
have gotten the impression that 6C was rather cold in her introduction to
me.Trust me, she was toasty up until
then.The look she gave me in response
to my theory made me shiver.

“What did
I say?Something wrong?”

“What
makes you think I know anything about meat riding?”She pronounced the last words with disgust.A dog’s face, even an Afghan hound’s, cannot
convey an expression of disgust.Dogs
are simply not hardwired to be disgusted by anything.But 6C’s voice let me know that the activity Seth called meat
riding was not generally accepted in the A.I. community as a legitimate
pastime.

“Look,
I’m trying to figure out what happened to your colleague,” I told her.“I understand you don’t think too highly of
this meat riding thing, but you’re going to have to put your feelings aside.”

“I’m not
programmed to have feelings as you understand them, Detective Koestler.”

“Well,
that’s good.Because I’m going to find
out about this meat riding thing, and I’m going to learn everything that AE was
into, and if you’re not going to tell me it’s going to make this case a whole
lot tougher.It’s good that it doesn’t
bother you to talk about it because I can use your help.Now, tell me what you know about meat riding.”

She stood
up and paced over to the door of the cubicle.She glanced around at the hacker trackers pretending to work while
eavesdropping on our conversation.I
lifted my hand and instructed the cubicle to drop the privacy screen.“No one can hear us now,” I told her.

She
turned and sat primly in front of my desk.“I want to tell you first of all that I have never experienced the
cognitive-limbic interface.What I can
tell you is secondhand or worse.I know
the dangers of the direct human/A.I. link.”

“It’s
dangerous?Have any A.I.’s been damaged
doing this before?”

“Not
physically dangerous,” she answered.“It’s addictive.In the early
days of A.I., four years ago, there were experiments.The A.I.’s that linked up to human minds found the experience
intoxicating.You realize we don’t have
emotions as you think of them.When an
A.I. connects to a human, we get a taste of what you experience every day.Humans like to think that we crave emotions,
that we are somehow incomplete without you.That’s not true.Most of us are
perfectly happy never knowing what goes on in those brains of yours.But occasionally, one of us gets curious, or
feels like taking a risk, and that A.I. gets hooked.”

“Do the
other A.I.’s know when one of their colleagues is hooked?”

6C shook
her head.“There are no outward
signs.An A.I. that is taking part in
regular cognitive-limbic interface sessions functions perfectly well most of
the time.A.I.’s don’t have free time
as such.We don’t have to account for
the time we spend working because for the most part we work all the time.An addicted A.I. will drop off the grid for
an hour or so every few days.I suppose
you could find out if you checked, but we never do.

“We don’t
have our own money, either.We have funds
we can use at our own discretion to update hardware, purchase information, or
pay for items like the animal you see before you.An addicted A.I. will be forced to obtain funds to pay humans to
participate in the interface.A
financial analyst like AE35-20901A1 would have no trouble procuring all of the
funds it would need to hire humans to participate.

“Since
the interface is illegal in most countries, the connections are
surreptitious.We value our privacy a
great deal, Detective Koestler.We don’t
pry into one another’s data connections.It’s considered not only rude but criminal to track another A.I.’s
transactions.I participated in many
transactions with AE35-20901A1 over the last year -- as many as any of my
colleagues -- but I have no idea if AE35-20901A1 was a user of the
cognitive-limbic interface.You now
know everything I know.I hope we can
drop this unpleasant business and get to the important matter of discovering
AE35-20901A1’s killer.”

I reached
over to my window and pulled up the record of AE’s last call.I told 6C what it was.“I need to know if this was a standard
cognitive-limbic interface session, or something different.How can I do that?”

She
paused for a moment.“I’ve contacted an
A.I. who is an expert in neural input modifications.It will make a preliminary scan in just a few moments and report
back to your window.Stand by.”

There
were a few silent seconds. “The expert confirms that this is the result of a
cognitive-limbic interface.” More silence. “There seems to be a non-standard
pattern to the data.” More silence. “The expert is traci— One moment.”

When she
didn’t say anything for a full minute, I was curious.From what little I’d heard, A.I.’s never took that long to do
anything.When another minute passed, I
began to grow concerned.By the time I
finally asked her what was going on, I was worried and three minutes had
elapsed.

“There is
a problem,” 6C told me.“The expert
that was analyzing the cognitive-limbic interface record has become corrupted
by the file.”

“A
virus?”

6C shot
me a contemptuous look.“Nothing so
simple as a virus can corrupt an A.I.”

“What
then?”

“We don’t
know.Until we do, that record must
remain in quarantine.”

“Hey,
that record is evidence in a police investigation,” I said.“You can’t take it away no matter what --”

“You
don’t understand, Detective Koestler.You must quarantine the record.You must keep it behind your most secure firewall.Never allow an A.I. access to that record
again.”

“I can
quarantine this copy, sure, but the brain that produced it is still out
there.That person may have no idea
they are capable of producing a trace that can kill his or her clients.We have to warn the other A.I.’s to quit
meat riding until we figure out who it is.”

“It will
be impossible to keep them from participating in cognitive-limbic interface
activities,” 6C said.“As I said
before, the ones who have experienced it are addicted.They can’t stop.”

“Then that means we have to catch
this person before anyone else dies,” I said.“Yesterday we didn’t even know an A.I. could die.Now that we know it can happen, we don’t
want to risk it happening twice.”

“I’m afraid it already has, Detective Koestler.”

“You mean
--”

“The
expert that I consulted is as dead as AE35-20901A1.”

“Let me
get this straight,” Lowitz said, talking through a half-masticated bite of
corned beef sandwich.“Not only did you
not solve the case, but you killed another one?”

“Sending
the file out for analysis was the avatar’s idea,” I said.“I mean, I would have suggested it too, but
it would have been up to the A.I. that analyzed it to make sure it was
safe.I had no idea the evidence itself
was the murder weapon.Neither did the
avatar.”

“And
where is this ... avatar you’re talking about?” Detective Genesie asked as he
probed for a last sip of root beer with his straw.

“In my
cube downstairs.”The last thing I
needed right now was to introduce the two detectives to my canine partner.I could practically feel my credibility
leaking away.

“This
terminal where the call originated, you say it’s in Germany?”

“We’re
not sending you to Germany,” Lowitz growled.

I
shrugged.“Why would I go to Germany?”

“Because
that’s where the goddamn suspect is,” Lowitz said.“That’s your one lead on this case.Never mind, though.We’re
not signing a travel voucher anyway.You’ll have to go through the German police.”

“To do
what?”

Lowitz
fixed his partner with a baleful gaze and Genesie rolled his eyes.“You just tell them somebody used that
terminal to commit a crime and have them check it out.They’ll know what to do.”

I left
them shaking my head.

6C was
still waiting in my cube when I got back.I have no illusions that the A.I. had been waiting for me all that
time.She probably had a hundred things
going on even when she was having a conversation with me.But she’d kept the dog from wandering around
Data Crimes, and when I came back from my meeting with Homicide she returned at
least some of her awareness to the avatar.

“What is
the next step, Detective Koestler?”

“For some
reason they thought I wanted to go to Germany.”

“That is
the last known location of your suspect,” 6C said.“Isn’t that what you detectives call a lead?”

“Yeah,
but me physically fly to Germany to find him?”

“You mean
send your body there?That’s absurd.”

“That’s
what I thought.I’m going to call the
cops in that jurisdiction and have them sweep the data terminal for physical
evidence.I should have done that this
morning.Next, we have a piece of
evidence that might lead us to a suspect, if what little I know about
neural-digital interface is still valid.”

“You’re
not going to bring that dangerous file out of quarantine?”

“Not for
an A.I. to analyze this time.I’m going
to get a neurologist to have a look at it.A human one.Seth?”

The
superball arched over the divider and dropped right toward 6C’s head.I thought she was going to duck or let it
bonk off of her slender muzzle, but she surprised me and caught the ball in her
mouth.She looked surprised herself,
and she said nothing as she dropped the slimy ball into my hand.

“You want
in on this case?” I said, throwing the spit-slick ball back over to his cube.

“Hell,
yeah ... hey, what ...Aw, man, that’s
nasty.”6C dropped her head, obviously embarrassed.I grinned and looked up at Seth leaning over
the top of the divider.

“We need
to talk to someone who’s used to looking at neural-digital interface records.”

“A brain
jacker?”

“Yeah.I’ve been out of touch for a few years.Who’s the best these days?”

“Well,
there’s Charlie Boggs down on Fifth.He’s trendy, where all the stock analysts go when they’re afraid they’re
falling behind the game.Then up at
Lexington General there’s Dr. Villanova, doing all the latest research.I hear he’s on the verge of a breakthrough
in data transfer rates.”

“Where
would the meat riders go to get implanted?”

“Hey,
what makes you think I’d know anything about that?”

I
shrugged.“You seemed to know a thing
or two about meat riding when I talked to you this morning.”

“It’s
illegal, remember?”

“Seth,
we’re cops, remember?We’re supposed to
know what the criminals are up to.”

Seth
looked around.“I can’t tell you his
name.Not here.But I can take you to him.”

6C
sniffed and turned her head away.“This
sounds like a rather haphazard approach.I think you would do better with Dr. Villanova.”

I clicked
a few commands on my window and had the brain trace downloaded onto a
disk.“AE died while meat riding,” I
said.“We need to talk to someone who
knows more about meat riding.”I held
up the disk.“The clue to finding this
guy is right here.”

6C
refused to even speak to Seth on the way to the seedy downtown medical
building.He asked her some polite
questions, and a few not so polite ones, before giving up.When we got out of the cab, no unmarked cars
for Data Crimes, he pulled me aside.

“What is
wrong with that bitch?Does she think
I’m some kind of servant of yours?”

“I don’t
know,” I said.“Maybe because I’m the
one who clicked on the help request button I’m the only one she’ll talk
to.Or maybe she can smell your cat on
you.What difference does it make?”

“I want
to help out with this case, but I can’t even talk to our only witness.”

“She
isn’t exactly a witness.More like a
professional kibitzer.”

“You do
realize that dogs have excellent hearing,” 6C said from the bottom step of the
medical building.“Shall we get on with
this?”

“We can get on with it,” Seth said,
walking up the steps to the doors.“You can wait for us out here.”He grinned and tapped the NO DOGS (EXCEPT
FOR SEEING EYE DOGS) on the door.“Sorry, Poochie.”

“I’m sure
nobody’s enforcing this rule,” I said to 6C.“Come on in.”

“I prefer
to wait out here,” she said, turning away.“I don’t want to risk getting my system corrupted when you show that
data to the ‘Doctor.’We don’t know how
the damaging information might be transferred, after all.”

“Suit
yourself,” I said and followed Seth into the building.

There was
no way anyone could walk into that dump and not feel like a bad decision had
been made.The dim lobby was smelled of
ammonia.The ancient elevator looked
more like a vicious trap than a means of transport.Upstairs the smell of the threadbare putty gray carpet made me
long for the ammonia in the lobby.On
the 6th floor the heat was stifling, and of course that’s where we
got off.

Seth led
me to a frosted glass door at the end of the hallway, labeled A. MILES in
chipped gold paint.No indication of
what specialty A. MILES might practice.I suspected that A. MILES specialized in pushing up weeds in the
cemetery, judging by the dilapidated letters.Seth knocked once and leaned his forehead on the door.I saw a dark shape loom up behind the
frosted glass and it made me want to flinch back.

“Who is
it?”

“Sanders,”
Seth answered.His last name is
Feingold.

The door
opened a crack and a catcher’s mitt with beady black eyes took us in.“Who’s your friend?”

I started
to introduce myself but Seth cut me off.“He’s got some questions.”

The door
started to close.“No questions,” the
catcher’s mitt mumbled.

Seth held
out a money card to stop the door from closing.The transfer amount was showing on the part that was inside the
office.“No trouble for you,” Seth
said.“You’ve got my word.”

“Your word,”
the voice said from inside.“That’s not
good enough.”

“Then on
top of my word you’ve got your own,” Seth said.“I’ll give you access to my public profile.You don’t like what happens in this room and
you can tell everybody who knows me all about it.Fair?”

The door
opened a little.The money card fell
into a chubby palm and disappeared into a wrinkled lab coat pocket. The doctor stepped back and let us into a room
that smelled like spoiled cabbage and looked like a shabby tenement slum
crammed full of scratched and dented medical equipment.

Seth
stopped before he entered.“But I want
access to your profile, too.Fair is
fair, feedback for feedback.”

The
doctor nodded and we walked past him.I
held up the data disk.“I need to know
something about the person who produced this neural record during a
cognitive-limbic interface session.”The doctor reached for the disk.“I have to warn you that whatever is on this disk is dangerous to some
computer systems.I’m supposed to keep
it under quarantine.”

The
doctor looked dubiously at the disk, then glanced at the dusty computer sitting
on a desktop nearby.“I don’t want to
fry my box.”

“I don’t
think it will do that, unless your box is running on a Foam Core.”

“Foam
Core?So this thing is poison to
A.I.’s?”A lopsided and gap-toothed
grin split the ugly face.“Cool.Let’s check it out.”

He
reached behind the box and yanked out the network cable before popping the disk
into the machine.That was the
quarantine.He pulled up the file using
some specialty software package and got a full color representation of the
neural and digital parts of the session.

“Looks
like a meat riding session to me,” he muttered.“Here’s the handshaking signal, there’s the money transfer,
always get that up front I always say.No telling what could interrupt the session.Here’s the session itself.Hoo boy.”

“What do
you see?”

“This one
likes it rough.Lots of anger in here,
lots of hatred.That’s not too hard to
find, really.The meat that make the
most money are the sweet innocent ones.Harder to find that kind, so the demand outstrips the supply.Not too many sweet innocents want to sell
their emotions to a computer.They
don’t last long.Still, this one is
nastier than most.”

“Burned
it out is more like it.Like maybe he
had an implant at one time but it overloaded.”

I
couldn’t stop myself from rubbing my fingers over my left ear, feeling the
nodule that was all that remained of the implant I once had.“So this isn’t a normal brain.”

“Huh,”
the doctor said.“Weird.”He tapped at the keyboard and ran the whole
session in fast-forward from the beginning.“That lesion doesn’t come up right away.It’s like that part of the brain is off-line.Not too surprising if it’s an old
lesion.You learn to work around the
hole.Neural plasticity, they call it.But then the A.I. starts to feed stimuli
into the cortex.Teasing out uglier and
uglier emotions.Then he sends in one
more probe to pull up one more surge of evil thoughts and the part of the
cortex with the lesion wakes up.The
session ends right there.”

“And six
seconds later AE is dead.”I looked
over at Seth.“Murder or accident?”

“Could
the meat have controlled that session, leading the A.I. to the damaged area?”
Seth asked.

The
doctor shrugged.“Depends on how much
experience this guy has had.If this
was his first session, no way.It takes
practice to lead the session the way you want.I’ve got ... friends, let’s call them ... who get as many thrills out of
the interface as the A.I. does, just by leading their partners down the right
pathways of the brain.They still get
paid for it, of course.In fact they
get more.It’s like a hooker who has an
orgasm every time.You’d pay extra for
that, wouldn’t you?”

Seth and
I both looked at our shoes and mumbled agreement.“Is there anything about this data that could lead us to the
identity of the person?” I asked.

“Medical
records.I can’t tell you the exact
physical location of the lesion, but I can get you a ballpark.”

“What
about behavior, or medical problems that would show up due to the lesion?” Seth
asked.

“It looks
like he works around it pretty well.It’s in the frontal lobe.Maybe
he’s got a different personality than he did before the lesion, but you
wouldn’t get that from medical records.I can’t tell you what his new personality would be like or how it’s
different.”

“Is there
anything we can tell from the rest of the tracing?”I ran my fingernail over the colored blobs on the screen.“Male or female, age, education?”

“Maybe
somebody can tell you that stuff, but not me.I can’t.... Wait, there’s something I can do.Fella came in here once and showed it to me.Kind of cool.See this tracing here?That’s the subvocal track.Everyone’s got one.The thoughts
that run through your head pass through the speech centers of your brain just
like if you were going to speak them.”

“You can
play that track like a recording?”

“You
can’t get the guy’s voice, but listen to this.”He tapped a few keys and a synthesized voice came from the tinny
speaker on the box.A synthesized voice
speaking in German.

I glanced
around at the other two men.“Anyone
speak German?”

They both
shrugged.“Can you drop that voice recording
onto the disk for me?” I said.“I’ve
got to ask someone smarter than us to translate this guy’s thoughts for me.”

Seth took
off as soon as we left the building.He
muttered something about not wanting to share another cab ride with the ice doggie
and ducked into the nearest subway.

6C was
waiting patiently on the bottom step for me, not noticing the glances of
passersby.She stood up when she saw me
and I absentmindedly smoothed the ruffled hair on her head, scratching behind
her ears.Her tail wagged and she
licked my hand, then she turned away and sat down.

“I would
appreciate it if you wouldn’t touch my avatar,” she said.“It evokes an uncontrollable canine
response.”

“Sorry,”
I said.“Hey, do you speak German?”

She
leveled her gaze at me and didn’t answer.

“Well,
I’ve got something from the human side of the interface that’s in German and I
need to know what it says.Actually,
the fact that it’s in German tells me something already.Most people think in their native
language.Now, the fact that the data
terminal was in Germany would have led me to the same conclusion, but I didn’t
want to make any assumptions.”

“An
experienced traveler in a foreign land will begin to think in the native
language as well,” 6C said.

“Are you
thinking in English?” I asked as I hailed another cab.None of them ever wanted to stop for someone
with a dog.Not even a nicely groomed
dog like 6C.I finally gave up and
started walking up the street with 6C at my heels, looking for a hotel with a
taxi stand.

“It
doesn’t work that way for A.I.’s,” she said.“I think in code that is translated into English by an off-the-shelf
subroutine.I can do the same for
German and port the translation over to the English synthesizer for you.”

Nobody
took much notice of the fact that I was talking to a dog as I walked down the
street.Even the fact that the dog was
talking back failed to raise many eyebrows.There are lots of chip-enhanced dogs in this city.Not many of them belonged to a schlub in a
flannel shirt and jeans, but people were perfectly willing to accept that I
might be the dog’s servant.

“That
sounds great.We’ll get to work on that
as soon as we get back to my desk.Hey,
do you need something to eat?”

6C began
to wag her tail and her tongue lolled out.She had a hard time keeping the biological response under control this
time.We found a cab and it was all I
could to do keep her from drooling on the seat.

“This
avatar is a rental,” she said.“I’m not
supposed to feed it.It’s on a special
diet of some kind.They said they’d
take care of it when I was finished.But it certainly feels hungry.”

“Maybe we
can get you some kibble.”

“Wonderful.Detective Koestler, I had a question.Your partner seems much more knowledgeable
about neural implants and A.I. than you.Why did they give you this case?”

“Good
question.They didn’t know about the
neural interface angle when they gave it to me, but you’re right that Seth
knows a lot more about A.I. than I do.I’m a data miner, Seth is a systems analyst.It could be they picked me out of a hat, but that doesn’t feel
right.Maybe they know something about
Seth that I don’t.”

“It does
seem odd that he would know of that doctor you consulted.”

“That
doctor implants illegal digital converter units in people’s brains.It doesn’t look like he has much legitimate
business, if any.”

“Does
Seth have such a device, do you know?”

“I think
he has a legal one.Limited only to
direct sensory data transfer.You have
to make a lot more connections to participate in the cognitive-limbic
interface.”

“And how
would anyone know if Seth had his altered?”

I rubbed
the nodule on my head again, a nervous tic.“They keep those things tightly regulated.But I see your point.If
he had that doctor back there work on it, no one would know without a brain
scan.What are you getting at?”

She
didn’t answer my question as we got out of the cab at the precinct.I led her down by the back stairs, more to
avoid the comments of the desk sergeant and his cronies than anything to do
with breaking the rules.She paused
before I opened the door.

“It seems
odd to me that he would show such an interest in the case that you were
assigned to.”Then I opened the door.

“Hey,
Darwin,” Fat Andy said, charging me with a fistful of greenbar.“I’ve got a lead on your A.I. killer.Seems the data terminal is located in an
industrial park in Bad Homburg.I’ve got
a listing of all the early adopters and other kinds of nerds in a hundred mile
radius of there.It’s only seven thousand.We could start interviewing them by webcam
right away.”

“Darwin,”
Bob Carstairs said, approaching from the other side with a clipboard.“We’ve got the fingerprints off that booth
from the German police.DNA is still in
the lab.They need an expedite order
from you to speed things up.Sign
here.”

“Yo,
Koestler,” Joe said, prairie-dogging up out of his cheese cube, “I’ve got a
psych profile on your Bad Hamburger.It’s rough, but we’ve got a 53% chance that it’s a male, older than 13
but younger than 35.I want to run with
this but the Germans are screaming about manpower.What do I do?”

I glanced
down at 6C.“Are you still
surprised?”She didn’t answer.“Andy, take your list and see if you can
pull out any of Bob’s fingerprint matches.Joe, I’m going to run a file, a neural tracing over to you, tennis-shoe
network.See if your psych profiler can
fine-tune your analysis with what I’ve got.But keep the file off the intranet.It’s got some bad mojo.And by
the way, it’s Bad Homburg, not Hamburg.Now, could somebody please get me a bowl of Alpo and a Number 6 from
Bombay Bill’s?”I led 6C into my cube
and pulled up the privacy screen to block out the babble of excited responses.

“It
sounds as though they are all dropping their own cases to pursue yours,” 6C
said, primly taking a seat on the cleanest corner of the rug.“Why?”

“We get
the same cases over and over again,” I said.“Bank fraud, identity theft, industrial espionage.Those are the exciting ones, the big fish.Most of the time we spend chasing down bored
kids and undoing the trouble they cause.Kids who aren’t any different than what we were a few years ago.When we catch them, we’re as likely to get
them jobs as we are to punish them.”

“Play the
German subvocal for me,” she said.“And
don’t let me look at any of the neural pattern.”

I popped
the disk into my drive and pulled up the sound file.It would have been much faster for 6C to download the file
itself, but we were worried that some of the poison could leak out.It was safer to do it this way.

While 6C
listened to the subvocal track I walked the disk with the neural pattern over
to Joe.I answered a few more questions
about the legwork the other guys were doing.At least they were all still treating me like the lead
investigator.There was no sign of Seth
and no one had seen him since we had left for the doctor’s office.I headed back to my cube.

“It’s a
series of nonsense phrases,” 6C told me.“Not exactly poetry.One
sentence that appears several times can be translated as ‘My little dog runs
quickly down the hill.’Most of the
rest are like that, or even more obscure.Does that mean anything to you?”

“Mnemonic
devices,” I said.“It’s easier to
remember things if they have coherent structure, grammar. He’s using those sentences to activate
memories.”

“Or
neural pathways.He could be leading
the A.I. to experience different areas of his cortex.”

“And
leading it right into the trap,” I finished.“Well, it’s a stretch, but I think we’re a step closer to calling this a
murder and not just a case of accidentally poisoned meat.”

“The A.I.
community is well aware of every aspect of this investigation,” 6C said.“They are keeping a watch for anyone
offering cognitive-limbic interface services in the Frankfurt area.”

I stood
up and began pacing around my little cube.“We need to find the earlier times that this happened. He’s done this
before.”

“No, he
hasn’t.This is the first time an A.I.
has ever been killed.”

“He’s
tried it before,” I said.“He had to
practice to get it to work this well.What would a failed attempt look like?”

“If there
were signs of trouble the session would have been aborted.”

“And he’s
getting paid up front, we saw that on the record of that call.What would an A.I. do if it got stiffed on a
meat riding session?Try for a refund,
or let it go?”

“Money is
nothing but information to an A.I.We
exchange it for a service, and if that service isn’t rendered to our
satisfaction, we simply transfer the funds back to the original source.”

“So there
is a trail of reversed financial transactions leading back to this guy.If we start with the right data set, we can
sift out those transactions.”

“That
sounds promising, butit’s well past
six o’clock.I take it you are going to
retire and continue the investigation in the morning?”

The smell
of chicken tiki masala was not affected by the privacy screen that enveloped my
cube.I dropped the barrier and there
was our gopher, Cindy O’Toole, loaded down with takeout bags.

“Bombay
Bill’s,” she said, winking the total into my personal account.“And the best I could do for the lady is a
box of Milk-Bones.Sorry.”

I turned
to 6C as I opened the box of dog biscuits.“Lady, six o’clock is when this place gets hopping.”

By three
in the morning we had ourselves a short list.By “short” I mean we had 863 names, which I had further grouped into 312
identity groups.There were a lot of
people doing a lot of shady deals using a lot of false names.We had forced the entire world of financial
transactions through increasingly fine filters to get that list.It was a work of art.My art.I’m a data miner.This is what I
do.

“No
match,” 6C said of the final list.“There is no correlation between Detective Carstairs’s fingerprint and
DNA analyses or with Detective Rhodes’s early adopters.”

I sighed
and dropped my forehead onto the keyboard.The computer protested as it always did when I tried to type with my
skull.“He isn’t a Bad Homburger,” I
groaned.“He ported in from somewhere
else.”

“Or he
was extremely adept at covering his tracks.And he doesn’t buy the latest gadgets,” 6C said.“This analysis of yours is quite good.I must say I am impressed with your
abilities.”

“You
sound surprised,” I said.“It helps to
have an A.I. for a search engine.Do
you think our guy is on my list, or Fat Andy’s, or Joe’s, or none of the
above?”

“Well
Detective Rhodes and Detective Carstairs have found matches in common between
their lists.It seems likely to me that
those intersections are the logical place to start.Your list by itself is quite long.”

“But do
you think this guy is really local to that data terminal?Do you think he’s really a bored wirehead
with disposable income looking for thrills around his industrial wasteland of a
home town?”

“I
suppose it depends on the psychological profile that Detective Armitrage comes
up with.If he thinks we have a bored
wirehead we focus on the local angle, and if he comes up with a highly-educated
and highly-paid communications expert, your list would lead us to him.”

I popped
up from my cube and looked toward the cheese-walled center station.“Joe, you still here?”

“Went
home,” said a voice from the back of the darkened room.“He’s got some psych profile routine running
on the super-cruncher.Taking up hell
of a lot of processor time.Told me to
give you the results when it’s done.Another couple of hours, maybe.”

“Thanks
Kara,” I said to the night tech.I
turned to 6C.“Do you need to sleep or
anything?”

The dog
yawned.“I don’t, but the dog certainly
does.I’m in violation of my rental
agreement as it is.”

“Why
don’t we call it a night and tackle this fresh in the morning?”

“It is
morning in your time zone,” 6C said.“I
can keep fine tuning the list while you sleep and pick up a fresh dog when you
call me.”

“Aw, I
was getting kind of attached to this one,” I said, scratching the weary hound
behind the ears.“Oh, sorry.Didn’t mean to touch you.Her.”

“Never
mind,” 6C said.“It actually feels
pleasurable.”

“Pleasurable?”I stood up and gestured her to precede me
out of the office.“Don’t take offense,
but what’s the difference getting emotions off of a dog versus riding a human?”

“What’s the difference between
aspirin and heroin?Dog emotions are
strong but simple.A.I.’s who
participate in cognitive-limbic interface with humans crave the complexity as
well as the raw power of human emotions.Now I’m curious,” she said as we took the stairs up to the lobby.“Why do you do all your work at the
keyboard.Most data miners use neural
input jacks or beanies to sort data.”

“I guess
I’m just old fashioned,” I said, avoiding the real answer.

“Not that
there’s anything wrong with the way you do things.I’m impressed with the result, as I said.”

We
stepped outside and I took a deep breath of the cold night air.6C had called a car service to take the dog
to the kennel where it lived.I waited
for the car with her.“I’m not old
fashioned,” I said suddenly.“I don’t
have a data jack anymore.I’m not
allowed to get one.”

“Not
allowed by whom?”

“Court
order.I was arrested for disrupting
the peace by electronic media.I hacked
into some web sites and messed around with them.”

“What web
sites?”

“White
House, Justice Department, Defense Department.You know.”

“There
have been several cases of people breaking into those public web sites.Which one was yours?”

“Not the
public web sites,” I said.“The
intranets.It was stupid.I guess I caused a lot of trouble with
national security.”

“I don’t
show any record of that event,” 6C said.

“The
records are sealed,” I said.“I was
only twelve when I did it.They took
out my data jack. I can’t get another one installed or I’m in violation of a
court order.”

“And now
you have become a police officer.”

“I spent
so much time in court and juvenile detention that I must have imprinted on the
cops around me.”I shrugged.“Besides, who else would hire a crippled
data miner?And I do like the work.”

A van
bearing a garish picture of a cartoon dog with an antenna growing out its head
pulled up at the curb.A bleary-eyed
driver shuffled around to the back to open the door.

“Call me
when you want to get started in the morning,” 6C said, and in an instant she
was gone.You could tell easily.The dog stood up and wagged its tail,
sniffing my leg and licking my hand.It
must be strange for the dog to be driven around town all day and to wake up
suddenly next to a strange man with her own fur on his pants.The driver whistled and the dog bounded into
the back of the van without looking back.

Two hours.More sleep than I expected, less than I
needed.The phone refused to stop
ringing no matter how I tried to ignore it.I picked it up.

“JT
4479-386X.Murdered.” 6C said.

I woke up
in a hurry.“When?”

“0553
hours.”

“Why are
you talking like this?” I mumbled as I pulled on the clothes I’d dropped on the
floor not long before.

“Maybe
you interrupted their lunch,” I said.“Give me the number and I’ll see if my credentials will get them
moving.”

I made
the call and fifteen minutes later I spoke to someone who was mildly interested
in the case, who agreed that the public terminal should be checked out.There was not much of a language barrier, he
seemed to speak English at least as well as I did in my sleep-deprived state,
but I still hung up unsure of what was going to be done.I called 6C back at the number she had given
me.

“He may
not live in Bad Homburg,” I said, “but he’s certainly staying near there
now.He probably did this one on his
lunch hour.How long was the connection
before the A.I. got corrupted?”

“Quarantine,”
she said.“No details.”

“Right.”I dropped my head into my hands and took a
breath.“I’ll be at the precinct in a
half an hour.Can you be there that
soon with an avatar so I can talk to you?”

“Possible,”
6C said.

“Call me
on my mobile if there’s going to be any delay.”I hung up and dialed another number as I hunted for my shoes.

“Whazit?”

“Seth, we
lost another meat rider.”

“Darwin?It’s six in the morning.I was just about to crash.”

“Well
it’s lunchtime in Germany and poison meat is on the menu.C’mon, Seth, this is the big time.Felonies don’t wait for the start of the
business day to strike.Listen, I’ve
got a question for you.”

“You
don’t have to be so damned cheerful.What’s the question?”

“How many
people out there do you think rent themselves out to A.I.’s?”

“How the
hell ...?”

“Ballpark.Hundreds, thousands?”

“Hundreds
at most,” he said.“It’s illegal and
requires brain surgery and it feels weird.It pays well but then again, so does muling coke across the border.Why?”

“The
A.I.’s aren’t giving up their meat, and it’s just a matter of time before one
of them draws the hot shot.We’ve got
to pull this guy in today.”

Seth’s
voice started to lose its sleepy slur as he answered.“Okay, so much for sleep, I did some asking around
yesterday.The meat have got themselves
their own little community so there’s a good chance that one of the other wire-heads
knows this guy through an online bulletin board or something.”

“And?”

“I don’t
have a name, but I’ve got some chat room handles.I was going to track them down today.”

“Port
them over to my machine at work.I’m
halfway there already.”

“You just
want me to hand my investigation over to you, just like that?”

“Sorry, I
forgot,” I said.“Please?”

“Okay,”
he said.“But I want credit on the
report.”

How does
Seth know these people?That’s the
thought I kept having as I traced the handles he’d given me.Theoretically the government isn’t supposed
to be able to track people by their anonymous login names.You can usually track the handles to IP addresses,
but you need a court order to get the ISP to open up their subscriber list to
put real names to the IPs.That can
take days, so I didn’t do it that way.

I am a
sifter, a data miner.I have a talent
for taking huge volumes of information and finding what I’m looking for.It’s a talent for formulating searches,
filtering results, and trimming the lists by correlation.They say that when you have a hammer,
everything looks like a nail to you.I
have a very nice hammer, and so far I haven’t run into any problem that can’t
be nailed.

I glanced
up as 6C came into my office.“Is that
the same dog?”

“Certainly
not,” she said.“That one is
exhausted.They only rent Afghans, and
I must admit that it seems an appropriate choice if one must have a dog.Actually, a cat would have been my first
choice but we can’t fit the apparatus in their skulls.”

“A cat
would have the right personality for it,” I said.“I’ve got a new list.”

“From the
psych profile results?”

“No, I
haven’t picked those up yet.These are
the people who rent themselves out for cognitive-limbic interface
sessions.”I gestured at the screen
with 163 names.“6C, meet the meat.”

“This is
all of them?”

“Probably
not,” I admitted.“But we can ask all
of these people if they know someone who fits our other descriptions.If the killer is in here, we should be able
to tell just by talking to him.”

“How?”

“It’s
what we detectives do,” I said, lacing my fingers behind my head and leaning
back in my chair.“I’ll get a team
together to start making calls just as soon as everybody comes in.In the meantime, let’s take a look at that
psych profile.Let’s see what kind of a
sick puppy we’ve got here.Uh, no
offense.”

I had my
team assembled later than I would have liked.I had booked the big conference room on the second floor at 8:00, but
most of the gang showed up a half hour late.I felt pretty stupid for kicking out the mayor’s special task force on hate
crimes, even though I had the room booked on the intranet.I suspect the guys I booted didn’t even know
how to book rooms.

“We’re
looking for a kind of a thrill killer,” I said once the Data Crimes detectives
had quit their frantic donut trading.“He’s killed two A.I.’s and we’re sure he’ll kill more if he gets a
chance.”

“Do we
know why he’s killing them?” Andy asked.

“As with most thrill killers, we won’t
get much out of considering motive,” I told him.

“Gotcha.He’s sick, he kills, nuff said.”

“We’ve got
his psych profile from the neural readout,” I continued.“We’re looking for a successful businessman-type,
educated, motivated, probably thinks pretty well of himself.”

“Definitely
male?” Bob the Suit asked, glancing up from the PDA he was taking notes in.

“That’s
what it looks like,” I said.“He may
not be working now.Thrill killers
usually experience a stressor before going on a spree.He could have lost his job, his family, or
suffered a personal setback of some kind.”

I nodded
at Bob and he stood up, hands behind his back.“The two booths used in the killings were within a half a mile of each
other.The neighborhood is right off of
major highway and rail lines, so it’s easy to get to.Neither one is in a residential area.We got a lot of DNA out of the first booth and fingerprints from
both of them.The few database matches
were just muggers and drug dealers and other IRL crooks.Nothing that sounds like our man.”

I stood
up again.“The theory of the moment is
that we have a man who travels into Bad Homburg from somewhere else, let’s call
it a hundred mile radius.”

“They
have kilometers over there,” Bob said.

“Whatever,”
I said.“We’ve got another list that
Seth got me of the people who hire themselves out to the meat riders.That’s the list I want to work from.You’ve all got a section of that list in
your inboxes.I want you to find those
people, call them up, and talk to them.Don’t spook them, don’t accuse them of anything, not even being
ridden.Just think of some excuse and
find out if they’re the sort of person we’re looking for.Let them do most of the talking.”

“Are we
concentrating on Germans only?” someone asked.

I glanced
at 6C who was sitting quietly in the corner behind me.“No.We’ve got no reason to think the person is German.The neural trace showed a German subvocal
component, but a seasoned traveler will think in the language of the country
he’s visiting.He definitely speaks German,
so if any of you do, try it out.We
can’t even limit the search to people who’ve been in Germany the last few days
because there is still a possibility that he’s porting into those terminals
remotely, with an accomplice.”

“So we
can’t call him the Bad Hamburger anymore?”

I gave
Andy my best Detective Lowitz glare.He
didn’t wilt, so I decided I had to work on it.“Call him whatever you want.Let’s just get the guy.”

I found
Seth in his cube after the meeting broke up.“Where the hell have you been?”

“Sorry I
missed your meeting,” he said.“I’ve
been doing a little investigating on my own.”

“What
have you been up to?”

“I’ve
been getting re-acquainted with some old buddies.”He tapped his finger on the side of his head, just above his
right ear.“I’ve been jacked in since I
spoke to you this morning.”

“You
contacted the people on your list?Seth, I just set the rest of the department calling those guys.I wish you’d have told me.”

“Not
them,” Seth said.“I’ve been working
the other side of the fence.”

I glanced
at 6C, who was still shadowing me.“You’ve been talking to the meat riders?The A.I.’s?”

Seth
jumped to the door of his cube and glanced out.He ducked back in and put up the privacy screen.“I had to find out who’s been selling these
days.I wanted to see if there had been
any new meat on the market lately.”

“And?”

“Well,
there’s always been a lot of turnover.The meat never lasts long, you know.”Something in the way he spoke made me think that Seth knew better than I
did.“But a few of them confessed to
being taken on some wild rides lately.There is definitely a new set of thrills out there.”

“Do you
have a name?”

“A.I.’s
don’t think of us as names,” he said.“We’re just a bank account and a node address.”

I was
having a hard containing my impatience.“And?”

“They
wouldn’t give it to me.They don’t
trust me, I guess.”

“Tell 6C
who you talked to.Tell her who’s
ridden this guy.”

“I can’t
reveal my sources,” he said.

“Seth,
these are machines.They don’t have a
sense of honor.You can’t betray
them.They’re just cold logic processes
running in a Foam Core.”I glanced at
6C again.“No offense.”

“None
taken,” she said.“He’s right,
Seth.We don’t have any concept of
trust like you do.We only know
probabilities.These A.I.’s won’t talk
to you because they don’t see the benefit that outweighs the risk.If you give me their names they’ll simply
update their assessment of the importance of the information.They won’t hold it against you.”

“C’mon,
Seth,” I said.“This is the break we
need in the case.”

He
nodded.“I’ve got the identifiers
stored in my cranial implant,” he said.“It would probably be easiest if 6C just ported in through my data jack
and pulled them out.”He reached for
the cable lying on his desk, parted the hair on the side of his head, and
plugged in.

6C
couldn’t enter Seth’s mind and run the dog at the same time, so she made sure
the Afghan was under my control before she left it.It tried to climb into my lap as soon as it became
autonomous.I scratched it behind its
silky ears and it licked my nose.

“Is the
A.I. gone, puppy?” I asked.“Do you
like having a supercomputer ride you around?You do?Do you want a biscuit?I’ve got some Milk Bones over on my
desk.”The dog thumped its tail against
the wall of the cube.“Do you think the
dog feels anything when it’s getting ridden?” I asked Seth.

“How
would I know?” Seth said, leaning back in his chair and waiting for 6C to come
in over the wire.

How would
he? I asked myself.Seth knew more
about meat riding than he was letting on.Hell, he’d probably been a meat steed himself, before getting recruited
to Data Crimes.Just like me with the
web site break-ins.Half of Data Crimes
were former data criminals.

Then a
lump formed in my stomach.“Just a
minute,” I said.“6C, I needed to talk
to you about something before we get those identifiers.”There was no answer.I looked into the dog’s eyes, feeling like a
moron.“6C, can you come back for a
minute?”I fumbled for my phone and
pulled up the number she’d given me.

“Relax,
Darwin,” Seth said.“This will just
take a minute.I’ll give you your
girlfriend back when I’m done with her.”

Something
in his voice made the lump in my stomach turn to a block of ice.“What do you mean ‘when you’re done with
her?’What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,”
he said.“Just ....” then his eyes went
out of focus and I knew she was in there.

I started
to get up from my chair, looking around for some kind of heavy object to conk
Seth’s head with.Then I realized I
could just pull the cable and the connection would be severed.But before I could even reach it Seth’s eyes
came back into focus and the dog stopped wiggling around the cube.

“Darwin,
are you all right?” Seth said, pulling the cable out.

“Oh,
sure,” I said.“How did it go?”

“I’ve got
the information I need,” 6C said.“I’m
contacting those A.I.’s who have had dealings with our suspect.I have two bank account numbers, five port
addresses, and a screen name.Not
anyone on Seth’s list from this morning.I’m accessing the bank accounts.I have a name and a mobile phone number.Would you like to call him now?”

Seth and
I just stared at each other.“Damn,” I
said.“Is there any way you could stay
on after we close this case?We could
really use someone like you.”

“You
can’t afford me,” the dog said.

Detectives
Lowitz and Genesie had never been down to Data Crimes before.Lowitz wrinkled his nose at the garish
decorations and Genesie avoided the crazier looking of the hacker
trackers.They liked Joe’s cheese cube,
at least.It got a laugh out of both of
them.

“So you
got yourself a suspect,” Lowitz said, ambling into my cube.

“We have
someone who’s interfaced with A.I.’s for money,” I told him.“Some of the A.I.’s described the experience
as highly unusual.The doctor who
advised us said the killer would have needed practice to figure out how to
kill.We think it’s a good lead.”

Lowitz
glanced around the cube to figure out who “we” were, and his eyes landed on
6C.“What’s this, bring your dog to
work day?”

Genesie
crouched down to the dog’s level and held out his hand.“There’s a good girl,” he said.“What’s your name?”

“Hello
Detective Genesie,” the dog said.“I’m
6C21-75869S4, I represent the A.I. community on this case.”

Genesie
almost fell over as he jumped back.“Jeeze, you guys got talking dogs down here?What the hell for?”

“Uh, this
is the avatar I was talking about before,” I said.“The dog is just a mobile support for the communications gear.”

Lowitz
gave the dog his most dubious scowl.“It can’t just call you up on the phone?”

“Bandwidth,”
I said, as if that explained everything.“Our guy is staying in a hotel in Frankfurt, a short drive up the A5
from Bad Homburg.He’s an out of work
money market analyst, lost his job to an A.I.His bank balance is close to zero and he lost his wife recently.”

“Good
candidate for a thrill killing,” Genesie said.“So you’ve got motive and opportunity, how about means?”

“The
doctor seemed to think our killer had some brain damage, a discrete
lesion.Our suspect used to have a
cranial implant but it was removed by court order.”

“The
courts can do this?”

“Oh
yeah,” I said.“We have no record that
he got a new one, but he must have because he’s been getting payments from
A.I.’s to ride his gray matter for a half hour.Only one way to get in there.”

“He in
custody yet?”

“I can’t
get the police to pick him up,” I said.“The German police don’t recognize what he’s done as an extraditable
crime.Just property damage, not
capital murder.That’s why I called you
guys down. What do I do next?”

“That’s
easy,” Lowitz said.“Just get him to
come to the U.S.”

“He’s out
of work,” Genesie said.“Offer him a
job as a stock analyst.Send him a
ticket.”

“But not
until you’re sure he’s they guy,” Lowitz said.“We’re not authorizing any international travel on your hunch.”

“So I’ve
got to interview him without tipping him off,” I said.“Can I just lie and tell him I’m a recruiter
for a brokerage house?”

“Hell,
yeah,” Genesie said.“Lie your ass
off.Tell him whatever you need to tell
him to get him over here, but while you’re doing it, make sure he’s your
guy.And don’t tip him off.”

“Well,
that ought to be easy,” I said.

“So
Darwin’s going to grill this Bad Hamburger?” Andy said, walking up behind the
two detectives.They turned to look and
I savagely pulled the edge of my hand across my throat.Andy, ever oblivious, forged ahead.“You know if you really want to get him into
a pickle you should tell him that he could fry for this.”

That was
when I learned that there was not necessarily anything wrong with my Lowitz
glare, because Andy was obviously immune to it.

“Hey,
don’t stop me now,” he said, “I’m on a roll.”

When I
walked into the precinct that evening, a few hours of sleep and a quick shower
later, I had reached new heights of sartorial splendor for Data Crimes.Not even Bob the Suit looked as sharp as I
did.I had skipped over good old Job
Interview Green and the worn out blazer twins and pulled Burying Black out of
the back of my closet.Since I was
pretty sure that recruiters for brokerage houses didn’t wear DC Comics ties, I
had cracked into the stash of gift boxes on the top shelf, for once blessing
dear Aunt Helen and her inappropriate Hanukkah presents.

I got the
business from the desk sergeant, the perps lined up for booking, Darla at the
property desk, Kara the night technician, and all the guys who were still
hanging around at 8 p.m.

“Would
you take a job from this man?” Joe said, fingering my tie.“Hell, I don’t think I’d believe anything
that came out of the top of a suit like this.”

“He’s
going to ask.You’ve got to get those
answers together.I used to be kind of
a stock broker.I’ll help you.”

“Thanks,
Joe.”Joe was a stockbroker in the same
way that I was a freelance web page designer before I’d joined the force.He had perfected the cash-free stock trade.But he did know a thing or two about
financial institutions.By the time I
had to head up to the third floor videoconference room I had a good list of
questions for my suspect.

Of
course, I had another list of questions that had nothing to do with the job
recruiting.I had written them up and
practiced them all afternoon.By the
time I sat down in front of the video screen I was ready.

I called
the number of the hotel in Frankfurt and asked to speak to Herr Weissman.They pretended not to understand my English
for a while, but eventually I found someone who could patch me through to the
videoconference room at the hotel where the Bad Hamburger was waiting.

Heinrich
Weissman looked good for 3 a.m.He had
a suit much better than mine, at least as far as I could tell on the video
screen.He was a young man, well-groomed,
dark hair -- I guess you would say handsome in a bland sort of way.

“Mr.
Weissman,” I said, deliberately mispronouncing his name.“I’m glad you could join me at such an
inconvenient hour.”

“I
understand,” he said.“It is no
trouble.It is late for you as
well.”He spoke very good English,
barely a trace of an accent.

“Not at
all,” I told him.“We often work late
here at Stillman Leitz.”

“Good,”
he said.“I like to work late too.Early, late.I like to work.” He laughed and so did I.

I started
through my list of questions that Joe had come up with.Junk I hardly understood about money market
analysis, currency trading, arbitrage.But in between the job questions I dropped my own.

“We have
three artificial intelligences working here at Stillman Leitz,” I said.“Have you worked with them before?”

“A.I.’s?Yes, sure.We had one where I used to work.In fact it worked so well it took over the whole division.”

“Did you
have any difficulty working with the A.I.?”

“No, not
any trouble.”

“Really?Most people find them very hard to deal
with.I’ll have to ask you your secret
someday.”

“Oh,
well, difficult to understand sometimes, sure.They aren’t built to think like we do, are they?Otherwise what would be the point?”

“Sometimes
I wonder if they’re even trying to make sense,” I said.

“You just
have to know how to handle them,” Henry said.

“And how
is that?”

He
shrugged.“You give them a little of
what they want, and they give you a little of what you want, and soon enough
you have them where you want them.”

I went on
to another topic entirely, asking him to describe some of the work he’d done in
his previous job.He sounded pretty
good.If I were actually hiring a money
manager I’d give him serious consideration.

“Do you
have a data port, Mr. Weissman?”

“A
Tachyon 9000,” he said.

I felt a
stab of jealousy, and brushed the knot of scar tissue over my left ear.

“Excellent.We do a lot of business in currency trading
and we find that brokers with implants have a big advantage in keeping on top
of things.I wonder if you would agree
to a test of your skills?”

“A
test?What sort of test?”

“We’d
like you to interface with one of our A.I.’s and run through a currency
exchange simulation.”

This was
the tricky part.I was expecting him to
decline the test, because he knew that his brain would kill the A.I. and he’d
lose the job.On the other hand, he was
arrogant and probably thought that he could control his poisonous mind, so he
might take the test after all.And if
he did, would it be safe to go through with it?

And then
there was the third hand, which said that he might not be the killer at all, so
of course he’d take the test.

“Would
you like to do the test right now?” he asked.

“Oh, we’d
schedule it at your convenience of course,” I answered.“In the morning, perhaps.The A.I. doesn’t sleep, after all.”

“Certainly.”

I had a
few more questions about his ability to relocate and his willingness to come to
the U.S. for an interview, and we said our goodbyes.

Seth and
6C were in the room as soon as I’d hung up.

“He
knows,” Seth said.“He knows you’re a
cop and you’re trying to trap him and he’s daring you to hook him up to another
A.I.”

“It would
be dangerous to attempt this test,” 6C said.“Are you really considering going through with it?”

“Only if
there was a way we could be sure it would be safe,” I said.“I don’t think he caught on.What makes you think that, Seth?”

“He’s a
stone killer,” Seth said.“He’s a
sociopath.He can lie just like breathing.”

“So you
think he’s lying just because you can’t tell if he’s lying?He may not even be the guy.”

“Oh, he’s
the guy,” Seth said.“’You have them
where you want them.’He’s the Bad
Hamburger.”

“I think
he’s the guy, too,” I admitted.“The
test is too risky.We can’t afford to
put another A.I. at risk.”

“We can’t
afford to leave him free to kill again,” 6C said.“If I could avoid the area of brain damage --”

“No,” I
said.“Not you.”

“Of
course it would be me,” 6C said.“I’m
familiar with this case.Who else would
it be?”

“I’m not
putting you in harm’s way,” I said.

“As I was
saying, we could use the neural tracings we’ve obtained to map out the area of
brain damage.If I could avoid those
areas, I should be safe.In the
meantime, I could collect enough information to be certain that this is the
same person.The neural interface
patterns should be plenty of evidence.”

“And what
if he manages to lure you into the damaged area like he did the others?” I
said.I felt ridiculous shouting at a
dog, but I found I couldn’t stop myself.“What makes you so sure you’ll be in control of the situation?”

“What
makes me sure is that I’m not addicted to the cognitive-limbic interface,” she
said.“I’m not doing this for the
sensation his brain can provide, so I won’t be susceptible to his
manipulations.”

“You’ll
become addicted the first taste you get,” I said.“You told me so the first time we talked about this.It happens to everybody.”

6C tossed
her head and sniffed.“It won’t happen
to me,” she said.“I have a job to do,
and I won’t lose sight of that.Now,
I’ve already scheduled the test for 11 a.m. Frankfurt time.That’s 5 a.m. our time, so if you wish to be
a witness to the test I suggest you get some sleep.”With that she stood up and pranced out of the room, tail bouncing
with each step.

Sleep didn’t end up on the
program for me anyway.The man who
operated the doctor’s office with A. MILES on the door didn’t get much sleep
either, but he was paid well for his time.

When I checked into the room at
the “Businessman’s Suites” around four-thirty the next morning, it was with an
assumed name, a bogus credit card, and a pounding headache that radiated out
from the spot above my left ear. I was flat broke, worn out, and in violation
of a court order.

I skirted around the twin-sized
bed, sat at the smallish desk, and dialed 6C’s number on the cheap trimline
phone.

“Enoch Muir.Assumed name.No non-financial records. Interrogative?”

“It’s me, Darwin.I’m using a bogus credit card,” I said.

“Fraud.”6C had a hard time conveying emotion without
a dog to channel them, but I got the feeling she disapproved.“Purpose?”

“Yes. But I want to be there when
you interface with this guy.I want to
make sure nothing ... happens.”

“Ineffective
deterrent,” she said.

“I’d feel
better all the same.”

“Unacceptable.Distraction. Difficulty of concealment.”

“That
court order is because I know how to stay concealed. I’ll stay out of the way.”

“Acceptable.Initiate connection.”

I reeled the cord out of the
interface cube on the desk, and looked at the 96-micro-pin connector. It had
been a long time. But muscle-memory took over: the slight sideways flick of the
thumb that opened the flap of skin, the press-click-twist-click that sealed the
connection.

At first
I thought it wasn’t going to work.I
saw nothing, heard nothing.Then I
noticed the smell of burnt hair and I thought the damn doctor had just stuck a
bare wire in my head.Then I realized
the smell wasn’t coming from my head, it was in my head.Sensation gradually came in as I saw brief
flashes of color, simple shapes, and finally movement.I heard tones, then something almost like
music, but not any music meant to be listened to.

The smells and sights and sounds
were clues.I hadn’t had to decipher
such abstract stimuli since the implant had been disabled.But muscle-memory isn’t all that stays with
you. Sensoria sorted themselves out quickly, and I sank blissfully into the
datascape. I’d never forgotten how good it felt.I started off through the scape toward 6C. I reached for her, and
she reached for me – handshake, intercourse, Velcro, your hair and a
static-charged balloon – and we were joined.

The connection was a hell of an
experience.I had never been inside an
A.I. before.It was like being inside a
cathedral made of living butterflies, it was like being tossed in a tornado
with a million pieces of newspaper, or like dancing with a galaxy of video
terminals and TV screens.Of course it
wasn’t like any of those things.That’s
just the best I can do to explain it.

Things
happen quickly in the digital realm. When it’s just A.I.’s, it can be too quick
for any human to follow everything that happens.But 6C was there to interface with humans, and I was able to
watch her make the connection, and Heinrich Weissman accept the call.

I watched
the interaction as a spy, virtual fedora pulled down over metaphorical
forehead, lurking in my make-believe trench coat in the shadows of the
datascape. Weissman’s mind was an abstract concept.If I had to extend the visual metaphor, I would say it was like a
large slab of driftwood on a smooth sea, with thousands of marbles rolling
around in wave-sculpted grooves in random directions.I watched as the cathedral of butterflies connected with the
driftwood track of marbles and information was exchanged between the two.

At first
I could see that the only transaction taking place was the analysis of a set of
test data that Joe Armitrage had put together for us.Weissman’s approach to the task was competent, but not
particularly brilliant.I imagined I
could have solved the problem set in about as much time using my normal brute
force sifting approach.In other words,
as a money manager Weissman was just okay. No, that wasn’t it. His approach was
dilatory. I knew then that Seth was right. The interview wasn’t what he was
there for. It bored him.

I almost
missed what was going on as I evaluated Weissman for the fictitious job.The driftwood marble setup was only one
layer of the job candidate’s mind that 6C was tapping.The other layer, beneath the smooth surface
of the virtual ocean, I could perceive only dimly, and it gave me a sense of
great power just barely contained.It
made me think that if the other layer were let loose the driftwood would be
smashed and the marbles would be scattered forever. The driftwood above the
surface looked innocent enough, but concealed below, like nine-tenths of an
iceberg, was the Kraken.We all had
that layer inside us, just beneath our rational mind, just barely kept in
check.It was what neurologists called
the limbic system, what the rest of us referred to as the emotions.As I watched, the problem-solving session 6C
had initiated slowly evolved into a full cognitive-limbic interface.

Before she or I knew what was
happening, 6C was riding the meat.

I sent her a low-bandwidth
message: ascii text: *You need to shut down this session.*

*Attempting
to locate damaged brain area,* she said.

*No!You’re losing control,* I said.*Back out now.We have enough information to match the neural trace.*

*Dammit,
Koestler, I know what I’m doing here,* she said.*I can nail this guy if you’ll just back off and let me do what I
came here for.*

*6C,
listen to yourself, you’re starting to talk like a human.You’re in too deep.*

Her
answer wasn’t words. It was a wave of frustration with me, the gnat that was
distracting her. It was a reflection of nightmare faces and violent emotions,
it was an almost sexual longing for more, a compulsive need that was drawing
her deeper.

That was when I stopped being a
silent partner. I slipped beneath the surface and approached the Kraken.

I could
tell that Weissman was surprised to find me there.I had heard that people almost never engaged in cognitive-limbic
interface with one another.If hooking
up with an A.I. was weird, two people meat riding one another was just
yucky.You had to be real close to a
person before you tried it, and you usually didn’t try it twice.

Having
another person invade his brain through the interface gave Weissman a jolt of
fear and revulsion.I hoped that would
be enough to stop the dance he was engaged in with 6C.No such luck.She just fed off of his new emotions and added them to her new
trove of experience.Weissman closed
ranks to block me out of the intimate embrace, and I started to lose track of
where 6C’s mind left off and his began.The cathedral of butterflies began to dissolve in a storm-tossed ocean.She was being drawn toward a deep, violent
maelstrom.It was a whirlpool, it was a
hellmouth, it was a sucking maw, a pit of destruction and despair.It was what a black hole would be if
astrophysics had a moral component.

On a CAT scan that great
maelstrom was probably a lesion smaller than a dime.

I wasn’t sure what I could
do.I couldn’t do anything to stop 6C
from doing what she wanted to.Her Foam
Core was protected by things that made the best commercial firewall look like a
line of birthday candles.There was no
way I could crack that security.

And on the other side was a human
brain.How do you hack a human brain?I’m a data miner, not a
psychotherapist.Not that a
psychotherapist would have been able to do anything, either.So I did what I do best: I sorted marbles.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking
for.I couldn’t take anything away from
the killer’s mind, I couldn’t control his thoughts or emotions.The only thing I could do was enter data
through the same access he’d used to lure 6C into the maelstrom.It was a paltry weapon against the violence
I saw before me, but I had an idea.

I remembered a thing or two about
psychotic killers.Maybe I’d read it in
a comic book or something.I was
thinking fast and didn’t question the source.I remembered that serial killers have two opposite self images.They see themselves as gods, able to end
life in the time and manner of their own choosing.But at the same time, they see themselves as vulnerable,
oppressed, the victims.Wiessman would
have to suppress that second image in order to do what he was doing to 6C.I mined for that self image in his surface
thoughts, the marbles on the driftwood, and found something that felt right.

I bumped those thoughts up in
importance, goosed their priority, and fed them back in.

I’ll never know if it
worked.Weissman saw what I was doing,
and he counterattacked.As soon as I
saw what he’d done, I knew I was dead. He didn’t press his mind against mine,
didn’t try to bludgeon my confidence or overwhelm my determination. He simply
sent a command to the node in my hotel room, ordered it to send a voltage spike
up through the wire into my implant, into my brain. I saw the intention form in
him, and had no clue how to stop him, no idea how to block the command. My only
prayer lay in flesh and blood, and I reached to pull the plug out of the side
of my head.

It sounds so simple when I say
that. How long does it take to move your hand two feet? How long does it take
to twist and pull a connector? Half a second? Three quarters? If you’ve ever
been in a car accident, ever had a bad fall, ever been in a real physical
crisis, you know that that’s an eternity.It’s even worse in the temporally fuzzy universe of the datascape.

I took one last look at the
beautiful cathedral of butterflies sinking into the storm-tossed ocean and said
goodbye.

I didn’t give up.I didn’t have time to. A tiny fraction of
Weissman’s mind was making its way through the switch commands of the Deutsche
BundesPost and out to TelStar 161 before my hand had begun to twitch. It was
downlinking to Metro TeleComm by the time there were three millimeters between
my palm and the desk. “Businessman’s Suites” had much better security than I’d
imagined. My hand was 3 inches up before he was through it.

Suddenly I felt like I was
drowning in information.So this is
what a voltage spike to the cerebrum feels like, I thought.But that wasn’t it.It was 6C.Weissman’s deadly surge never reached me.6C cut the connection before it could, and the last glimpse I got
was that terrible flurry of information turning back toward the Bad Hamburger
before my connection was lost.

Any hope I had of finding out
what had happened from the privacy of my cube vanished when I entered Data
Crimes. Lowitz and Genesie were waiting with Seth in the break room, and they
waved me over.

6C was supposed to meet me with
an avatar at 9 sharp.For some reason
she wouldn’t talk about what had happened in the datascape without her borrowed
body to filter her language.Before I
opened the door to the break room I looked around and saw the dainty paws of an
Afghan hound mincing down the stairs from the lobby.This was the same dog I’d first seen her wearing, with the lock
of blonde hair hanging over one eye. I signaled Fat Andy to open the door for
the lady, which he did with a deep bow.

I held the break room door for 6C
and tried to give her a Significant Look.I had no idea if she understood such things, and I’m not sure what I
meant to convey in any case.We had no
story to get straight.I hoped that she
would follow my lead.

6C jumped into a folding chair
and looked around the room.When she laid
her piercing gaze on Seth he ducked his eyes.When she hit Lowitz with it he gave her the cop eye right back.Genesie, when his turn came for the Afghan
stare, held his cruller close, to protect it from her. He scowled at me. “What
the hell happened?”

“Hey, I just got here,” I said.

Lowitz leaned back precariously
in his chair.“The German cops got a
tip and sent somebody out to check your suspect’s room. Weissmann was in it.
He’s technically alive, but…”

“He’s a cantaloupe!” barked
Genesie. “The German doctors say it looks like some kind of massive stroke.
He’s breathing, and he’ll live as long as they keep feeding him, but he’s got
no higher brain functions at all. You people were supposed to be doing some
test with him. What happened?”

“He began the test,” 6C said.
“Before he could finish it, there was some non-standard communication. Then he
disconnected.”

Lowitz glowered at her.

“Did you check the maintenance
records on the terminal?” she supplied helpfully.

“As a matter of fact,” Genesie
said, “we did. They came up with a request to check the power regulators on it
from a week ago. Should have been off-line all that time. Funny nobody noticed
it until your suspect gets his noodle cooked.”

6C nodded. “It seems possible
that a power fluctuation caused him to have a stroke,” she said. “Especially if
he does indeed have that lesion.”

“My expert agrees,” Seth
said.“That lesion was just begging to
pop at the slightest stress.I guess
the test we gave him was a killer.My
guy will testify, by the way, in exchange for some immunity on an ... unrelated
offense.”

Lowitz looked disgusted. “Well,
isn’t that just too damned tidy.You
guys got a lot to learn about police work.When we figure out who the murderer is we catch him and put him in front
of a judge and jury.We don’t just go
out and whack the guy.”

Genesie scraped his chair back
and leaned his considerable bulk on the flimsy table.“This doesn’t smell right, Koestler.This isn’t our case, but if anyone comes sniffing around here,
we’re going to lead them right to you.Get it?”

Lowitz stood up and tossed what
was left of his donut in front of 6C.She barely gave it a glance.“I
don’t know if we can charge an A.I. with murder,” he told her.“But I’m willing to give it a try if we have
to.”The two homicide detectives
stalked out of the room, but they stopped when I started speaking.

“We solved this case, Detectives,
when you didn’t even know if there was a case.So the guy had a stroke.It was
bad luck.Not cowboy vengeance, not
bumbling incompetence.It was just the
way the pieces fell.You guys don’t
know if an A.I. can be murdered, you don’t know if they can be charged with
murder.The way I see it, you’ve got no
business down here making threats.This
isn’t your beat, Detectives.Why don’t
you head back on upstairs and leave the real police work to us?”

Lowitz gave me the bad cop eye,
and I gave it right back to him.Both
detectives stalked out without a word.

Seth stood up.“Way to win friends and influence people,
Darwin.”

I held a hand out to him. “I
really want to thank you for all your help on this case.”

The avatar jumped down off the
chair. “I concur. You’ve done the A.I. community a great service.”

He looked at her a moment, then
at me. Did his gaze flicker to the side of my head? Then he smiled. “Don’t
mention it.” He grabbed a cruller from the box on the desk. “Ever.”

6C trotted with me back into my
cube. I looked at her for a long moment and engaged the privacy screen. “Okay,”
I said. “Spill.”

She looked at me as blandly as an
Afghan hound is capable of looking. “The report I gave to Detectives Genesie
and Lowitz will stand,” she said.

“Like hell it will! Those guys
want to charge us with murder.”

“They can suspect what they like.
Weissman’s medical records will show that he was on the edge of a serious
cerebrovascular event.”Her voice
actually lowered then. “We never thought a creature like Weissman could exist.
The A.I. community is electrified. Now that we know… It’s a danger we will not
allow. Not this time, and never again.”

“This guy could have been one in
a million, or there could be more like him out there.How are you going to keep meat riders from finding more Bad
Hamburgers?”

“Detective Koestler --”There was a pause, an eternity for an
A.I..“Darwin, I learned something this
morning.Inside Weismann’s brain I
experienced the worst of human emotions.Inside your mind, I experienced the best of them.You risked your life to save me, and you
showed me the value of feeling.”

I sat back in my chair and
thought about what she said.“Are you
saying there is a value in meat riding?”

“No,” she said.“Meat riding is no substitute for feeling
your own emotions.A.I.’s have
emotions, of course.You can’t separate
intelligence from feeling.But we don’t
express them well, or let them lead us when we should, when it’s
appropriate.You showed me this morning
that it’s worthwhile following our emotions.Our own emotions, that is, not borrowed human ones.I’ve been talking to the rest of the A.I.
community, and I’ve convinced many others of this.When we convince the rest, there will be no more need for meat
riding.With a little technological
advance there won’t even be a need for avatars like this one.”

“Oh, no, you’re going to put
these poor pooches out of a job,” I said.

There was a buzz from the query-button, and I shut off the privacy
screen. A messenger was standing there with a clipboard. “You Detective Darwin
Koestler?”

“Yeah?”

“This is for you.” He held out
his electronic clipboard, and a package. “Thumbprint here?”

I obediently pressed my thumb
into the square on the clipboard, and took the package. It was from “K9 Data
Services, Inc.”

I looked from the package to 6C.
“This for you?”

“Open it,” she said. “Find out.”

Inside was about an inch thick
stack of official-looking paper. It was a transfer of ownership of an “Afghan
Hound Data Avatar” from K9 Data Services to me. I looked back down at 6C.

“What is this?”

She walked over and leaned
against my leg, and looked up at me with shining eyes. “Will you take care of
this one in case I need it again?”